2015-03-07

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.

First off, it's clear here that the boy doesn't understand how the One Ring works. The Ring of Power makes its wearer invisible (except in direct sunlight, except to wraiths, etc. etc.), it doesn't give the wearer the power to make other people invisible as well. Okay, I get that's not the point of the story, and he's only nine, but it still bothered me to hear it done wrong.

Secondly, however, the issue here is that the school officials responsible for Aiden's seem to have been watching too many episodes of The Sopranos, since they seem to equate "disappear" in the literally become invisible sense with "disappear" in the Italian mobster sense of making a person disappear by literally killing them and hiding the body.

Already in one paragraph everybody seems nuts, and it just keeps getting worse.

Principal Roxanne Greer declined to comment on the fourth-grader’s suspension, citing confidentiality policies, according to the Odessa American, who first reported Aiden’s troubles Friday.

Parents who have kids in the school shouldn't stand for this. They need to en masse march into school, with reporters in tow, and demand that the principal defend herself or resign (or, ideally, both). Media and parents here are both complicit in letting Greer get away with such patent nonsense. She's hiding behind policies? Don't let her!

From then on there's really no hope left.

The family moved to the Kermit Independent School District only six months ago, but it’s been nothing but headaches for Aiden. He’s already been suspended three times this school year.

Two of the disciplinary actions this year were in-school suspensions for referring to a classmate as black and bringing his favorite book to school: "The Big Book of Knowledge."

“He loves that book. They were studying the solar system and he took it to school. He thought his teacher would be impressed,” Steward said.

But the teacher learned the popular children’s encyclopedia had a section on pregnancy, depicting a pregnant woman in an illustration, he explained

Aiden's other "crimes" are even less offensive than holding a ring over a kid's head and thinking that invisibility sauce could just pour out of it. He called a black kid black. Oh the humanity! How dare he accurately describe somebody. Don't schools teach kids what colours are still? Did they expect that with this knowledge the kids were just going to shrug and forget about it?